In our most recent online poll, we asked readers how they met their mates. We offered a few choices, but what we were really after were the stories behind the hook... er, meet ups. Still, we found it interesting that nearly 20 percent of respondents said they’d met their paramour online. Who says Sonoma doesn’t move with the times?

Here are the tales of romantic intrigue:

Needing to make up a studio class at Cal, I went to the next available session. Not intending to stay for the entire three hour studio, I asked around for who was the smartest in the class so that I may complete the work and leave. After meeting that person we hit it off immediately and continued talking for not only the entire three hours, but we stayed after and continued our conversation. Two years later we were married. The studio session took place on the Hayward fault at the entry of the Cal football stadium during a Geology class.

We met at a little jazz bar in Petaluma. I told her I was playing there on Sunday. She said, “Isn’t Sunday for watching football and drinking beer?” I said, “Please tell me you play the cello and speak Spanish.” She replied, “ Well, I can learn the cello and me llamo Rachel.” The rest is history.

My wife was a singer in a band and I was in the audience. I went back to the Sheraton to watch them for four nights in a row because the band was great and she was so cute.

I met him while I was driving and he was standing on a street corner in Petaluma. I was 16 and told my passenger, “I will marry that guy someday.” Here we are almost 30 years later.

It’s somewhat of an urban legend that one can find love in Sonoma post-35 years old, with a Sonoman, and as a Sonoma native. And yet we did. It was the front patio of the Swiss Hotel, sometime after 11 p.m. on a warm night in May. I was not interested. He found me annoying. One hour later, everyone there (like a dozen people) used a new iPhone app called Bump to exchange info. One month later, invites me to a party via email. I decline as I don’t remember him at all. Eventually, we become friends. We chat, but nothing earth shattering or romantic. Even more months later, he kisses me and my earth doth quake. I decide he shall be my boyfriend and so it is. Now he is my husband. We’ve experienced sickness, health, richer, poorer -- all the normal and not normal things. Love that man and thankful for him, the Swiss Hotel, and Sonoma.

We met initially online, back before it was popular and it was actually still weird. He was deployed in the Middle East and I was bored in Marin County. His new orders were bringing him to Petaluma, so when he returned home we met up and the rest is history.

(Through an online dating service) We just met for sex, but hit it off and now we’re married!

At a swimming (pool), he asked me over to his house, for a glass of wine. And the rest is history.

Take the Current Poll

Earlier this summer the City Council and the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art installed several large metalwork sculptures in the Plaza. Some loved them, some not so much. This week's poll question is:

I was a PPD cop walking a beat around the downtown area. Nancy was a cashier at the California Theater. On my rounds each evening I would stop and talk to her. That was 50 years ago, in February 2018, we will celebrate our Golden Anniversary!

We met in eighth grade, his family moved out of the area until ninth grade and we picked up where we left off. Then his family moved again that summer and it took 30 years for us to get back together, all good now!!

We met at Marioni’s. In the bar. I took his cowboy hat. For reals.

We met outside my parents’ house while my neighbor and him were doing some gardening.